On Aug 5, 2008, at 14:29, Sam Ruby wrote:
> Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote on 08/05/2008 06:39:58 AM:
> > Or is this thread really about establishing a mechanism that
> involves
> > binding a prefix to a URI using reserved attributes starting with
> > "xmlns:" and then using the prefix in front of local names separated
> > by a colon?
>
> There are some advantages to such an approach, and some
> disadvantages. Some of the advantages include working with the DOM
> API. Some of the disadvantages include usability issues that you
> have referred to. Other solutions which do not involve attributes
> starting with "xmlns:" can be found which map onto the DOM API.
> There may be ways to mitigate the usuability issus with solutions
> which involve colons in element names.
>
I'd rather not recap the whole ARIA discussion, since I've had that
discussion way too many times. However, compatibility with the DOM is
the major *dis*advantage of *any* scheme that puts a colon in element
or attribute names, since the colon is already special in XML and IE.
With a colon in names, you can't have DOM consistency with all of
these at the same time:
* text/html in existing shipped versions of Firefox, Safari and Opera.
* text/html in existing shipped versions of IE.
* text/html in future HTML5-supporting browsers.
* application/xhtml+xml in existing shipped versions of Firefox,
Safari and Opera.
--
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fihttp://hsivonen.iki.fi/